At least two people were killed and nearly 100 injured in three separate pileups involving nearly 150 vehicles along the same stretch of foggy Interstate 10 in southeast Texas.
Heavy fog and high speed suspected to have caused the accident on one of the highest-traffic days of the year - Thanksgiving Day.
A man and women, identified as Debra Leggio, 60 and her husband Vincent Leggio, 64, were killed when their Chevy Suburban SUV was struck by a tractor trailer, the Texas Department of Public Safety told KFDM-TV. The deceased are the residents of Pearland, Texas.
The series of collisions took place this morning at 8:45 a.m. near Beaumont leaving trucks and family SUVs twisted on top of each other.
Security officials rushed to the spot to pull the survivors off the vehicles. The accident left nearly two miles of wreckage involving cars, pickups, minivans, tractor-trailer trucks and several FedEx trucks along a busy Texas highway.
According to the Department of Public Safety, an accident on the eastbound side of the highway triggered the other accidents and this led to a dangerous chain reaction causing several crashes on the other side of the highway as well.
"We have 18-wheelers on top of cars, we have cars on top of cars. It's just catastrophic," Jefferson County sheriff's Deputy Rod Carroll told NBC News.
The fog was so thick that the drivers could not see the mounting pileup ahead and the officials did not initially realize that they are dealing with such huge wreckage.
